The
basic phenomenology of RojciewiczJr. and Rojciewicz and those similar found in
psychiatry are questioned by Lisa Blackman in her book ‘Hearing Voices’.
Considering it a ‘problem of hallucination’ she argues this view of
hallucination, whilst an interesting phenomenology, is framed in a particular
way by modern psychiatry, structured as it is through a combination of
biological and psychological explanations and interventions. She begins her
critique by exploring how the meaning of hallucination “has been created
through the kinds of concepts and explanatory structures, which are embedded
within psychiatric theorising and experimentation… [and which] claim to be
based on an understanding of normal and abnormal biological and psychological
functioning.” (p.15).
Blackman looks at some of this positioning within the discourse as follows:
“within psychiatric discourse some of the broadest assumptions are made about
what is natural) i.e. can be located within neurology for example), and what is
social. Psychiatric discourse, despite its commitment to examining the social
as well as the biological, is preoccupied with causality. This causality is
ultimately rounded within materialist explanations, which seek to locate the
exact neurophysiological mechanisms, which produce the possibility of the
hallucinatory experience.” (p.18). Blackman notes that despite the focus on the
biophysical aspect to psychiatry there is no unified explanation within this
context, she notes a shift from a focus on dopamine to brain lipids (the book
was published in 2001), circuit malfunctions, deficiencies in glutamate. She
also notes that as well as the focus on neurology and genomics there also
focuses on the social aspects of psychiatric experience e.g. the role of race
and ethnicity with regards both outcomes and misdiagnosis. There is an
epistemological shift within parts of the discourse towards the symptoms being
put in the context of the lives of the patients, this is associated with a
concern with treatment-resistant symptoms, where there is a sense the patients
should be listened to more. This has been associated with the rise in
techniques such as CBT. All these aspects Blackman locates in what she calls
the ‘problem of hallucination’. This ‘problem’ is in fact two problems: the
first (that we are dealing with here) is how to differentiate between
‘pseudo-hallucinations’ and hallucinations; the second the problem of non-compliance
and treatment-resistant symptoms (the governance of which is dealt with in the
rest of this series of blog posts).
Blackman goes on to ask, what it means to hallucinate. Blackman reads
psychiatry as treating voice-hearing as usually pathological. She argues that
psychiatry sees “this pathology [as] articulated as both an internal pathology
(paying attention to those mechanisms and deficits producing the possibility of
such an experience), and a social pathology. The voice hearer is viewed as
having, or potentially losing contact with, the social world, and simultaneously
losing certain capacities of social existence, such as the ability to function
in work and social relationships. The voices are viewed as a sign that
individuals can no longer self-regulate and control their behaviour, and are at
the mercy of the voices’ demands and wishes.” (p.19).
Blackman points out that “it is not enough then, to say that somebody is
hearing voices for their experience to necessarily be pronounced as a sign of
illness and disease.” (p.20). In a vein similar to Rosciewicz Jr. and
Rosciewicz’s typology Blackman also looks at the range of concepts and
explanatory structures that psychiatry uses to distinguish ‘real’
hallucinations from ‘pseudo’ ones. These include “vividness, duration, location
and control.” (p.20). Blackman takes each example one by one. The concept of
source is “articulated in relation to the location of the voices and whether
the person attributes them to an internal or external source. Are they perceived
as coming from inside or outside his/her head?” does the person locate them within
an object such as a television, or are they viewed as coming from the person’s
own head? However, Blackman argues that within the literature it is not so conceptually
clear cut “despite the inside/outside distinction, there are also seen to be voices
which are attributed to the person’s own psychological processes, and not
located in external sources. The distinction made is that these voices are ‘different’
from a person’s so-called normal thought processes. They operate in an
authorial mode of address, running a continual commentary on the person’s own
behaviour and conduct; insulting, judging, commanding or directly addressing.
Most of the literature focuses upon the disembodying feeling generated by this
constant retort, where a person is seen to lose the capacity to attend to
outside experience.” (p,21). She continues “this ‘inner-directed’ focus,
produced by third-person commentary, does not allow the inside/outside
distinction to be the only means of differentiating the ‘real’ from the ‘pseudo’
experience. (p.21).
The criterion of vividness “focuses on the vividness of the experience, and the
extent to which the intensity of the voice or image allows the person to
distinguish between self-generated images or thoughts, and those objects
external to him/herself.” (p.22). As an example, daydreaming, may indeed be vivid
but it is still deemed to be within the ‘normal’ bounds of experience because
the person can distinguish between the inside and outside. “It is not so much
the vividness of the voices or imagery therefore, but to the extent to which
individuals can recognise their self-generated nature. Vividness cannot
therefore stand alone as an index of disease… the important discriminating
principle therefore, is whether the person has an insight into their pathological
nature, and can judge and control them (i.e. not act upon them).” (p.22)
“Control is a discursive concept used to make the distinction between the
normal (‘pseudo’), and the pathological (‘real’) hallucination. It is an
explanatory structure, which organises the dispersal of other concepts, which
link together with this assemblage of elements. There may be a whole myriad of
vivid imaginings or sensory misperceptions which a paerson may engage in,
illusions, vivid imagery, creative thought and so forth but those signalling
pathology relate to the degrees of control a person has over these imaginings.
Hallucinations (proper), are not random occurrences, related to specific times
or situations, such as day-dreaming or sleep, but systematised, all-powerful,
all-pervading ‘events’ which engulf a person’s cognitive capacities. They are
viewed as overwhelming individuals’ normal psychological propensities, leaving
them unable to control themselves.” (p.22-23).
“How then,” Blackman asks “is the concept of control articulated and made intelligible?
Control is to be taken as a measure of social and work functioning, where the
focus is upon specifying how well a person is seen to be functioning within the
external milieu.” (p.23). The DSM III R for example distinguishes between the
normal and pathological based on whether there is a reduction in work or social
functioning. “Control is therefore not measured in relation to vividness, but
with a person’s relation to the external world. It is a measure of behaviour
and conduct, and not a measure of the quality of a person’s own internal
reverie. Within this division, ‘pseudo-hallucinations’ are those which do not
interfere with the person’s daily functioning. In other words, the person
appears to maintain an element of control over them.” (p.23). So, the time of occurrence
is another factor such as falling asleep or waking up, in which case hypnagogic
or hypnopompic hallucinations would be pseudo hallucinations, they are merely
viewed as “the twilight state between dreaming and consciousness, when we are still
living in both worlds; the mundane and the fantastical.” (p.23).
Lastly, “duration is combined and articulated with the other concepts already
discussed, and reduces the complexity of explanations forming the object,
hallucinations, into a differentiation, based upon the length of time the
hallucination has endured within the person’s psyche. Pseudo-hallucinations are
transitory, fleeting occurrences, which do not affect a person’s general level
of social functioning. Hallucinations are viewed as more permanent and impermeable
aspects existence forcing individuals to lose contact with their external
surroundings.” (p.23). The Manchester Scale, the Positive and Negative Syndrome
Scale are both psychometric scales that measure duration as an aspect of
pathology. Thus, the concept of ‘duration’ ties together the various other concepts
in order to distinguish between the pathological and normal. Blackman argues that devices such as
psychometric testing are examples of what Latour calls ‘inscription devices’,
in attempting to make these concepts calculable, measurable and classifiable
(often through a process of commensuration) they become ways in which “the
prior assumptions and presuppositions of this explanatory structure are
rendered into a form which produces those very properties as amenable to
investigation. The object of study, in this case, duration, forms a perceptual
system whereby persons are viewed as embodying the very properties that the
prior assumptions embodied by the tests, presuppose. This way of approaching
the ‘psychology of individuals’ is one which assumes that in order to understand
human subjectivity, one needs to turn inwards, beyond the envelope of the skin.
These processes ae then viewed as amenable to investigation through devices,
which abstract the individual from their social environment, and attempt to
measure some characteristic, which has been privileged by the investigator as a
measure of psychological functioning. These ‘manipulable, coded, materialised,
mathematised, two-dimensional traces’ (Rose), can then be combined with other
traces, to render intelligible the gamut of human subjectivity… However, we can
see within this example, that these devices are always made in conjunction with
measures about social functioning which exist beyond the immediate
investigative context. Even when the hallucinations are present almost
continuously, the ultimate differential factor is how the person reacts to the voices
i.e whether the person judges them to be ‘real’ or not. These judgments, as we
have already seen, are made in relation to work and social functioning. In the
end, despite the conceptual armoury, which attempts to tie the gaps and
contradictions in ‘psy’ explanations together into a coherent set of
explanations, the ultimate measure of hallucinatory experience is made in relation
to social norms of conduct and functioning. Even though psychiatry… is a
biological discipline, it is not enough to dismiss it along those lines. It is
how a conception of the biological is combined with the social, and the
psychological, in order to create the meaning and consequent treatment of
experiences possible.” (p.24-25).
Blackman goes on to note that there have been changes in the conception of
schizophrenia, and looks at the problems with this type of psychiatry. I will
continue to explore this before looking at a conception of ‘voice-hearing’
experience elucidated by Marius Romme and Sandra Escher (Blackman refers to the
Hearing Voices Network in her book), before returning to Rociewicz’s version of
Merleau-Ponty’s ‘intentional arc’ behind their phenomenological typology of
hallucination (having looked at alternative conceptions), to then ask the
question of how this ‘intentional arc’ becomes slackened, which will take us to
another survey of Bateson and Laing.

Having presented two voice-works using at least some of Freud’s techniques,
I think it is important to then look at some distinctions between ‘voice-hearing’
and dreams. In a paper looking at the phenomenology of voice hearing Rojcewicz
Jr. and Rojcewicz (Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 28, No.1, 1997) they
distinguish between voice hearing and dreams. Starting with Jean-Paul Sartre’s
distinction between hypnagogic images and dreams, they note that hallucinations
are “an isolated experience, shut off from other images, whilst the dream is ‘a
world.’ Despite any seeming nonsensicality, the dream images appear in a rich
spatial world. The dream action contains references to a temporal before and
after. The dream so carries us into a world that every dream appears to us as a
story… The hallucination is limited, fragmented, impoverished, more furtive
than a dream. Only a few words occur, not a full narrative or an introduction to
a world, however imaginary. The image in a dream may have multiple facets and
occur In relation to many images. The auditory hallucination is isolated, has
few if any spatial connections, and is experienced as detachment from other
sensory modalities… auditory hallucinations lack not only the fullness of
normal perception but also the richness, nuances, and multiple facets of the
dream.” (p.18). They consider this distinction to be a necessary component of
why auditory hallucinations appear as ‘voices’. Before we follow Rojcewicz, Jr.
and Rojcewicz’s argument about voices, it might be worth familiarising
ourselves with their view of other distinctive aspects of auditory
hallucinations. Firstly, they note that they contrast with everyday sensory
experiences, for a start the duration of hallucinations is quite limited, “what
the patient usually hears is not a sustained argument or a full discussion but
a only few words; the patient experiences fragments or sentences, not pages or
even paragraphs… as contrasted to everyday sensory experience, hallucinations
do not display multiple facets; they are disjointed, fragmented. Normally, an
object is perceived from several different perspectives and in multiple facets.
In auditory hallucinations, these varied perspectives of normal perception are
absent. Instead of a whole object being perceived a voice is heard. This voice,
disembodied, is heard in isolation from other sensory phenomena. In normal experience,
a person is perceived; the person is seen, experienced, through multiple sense
as well as heard. The direct, immediate words of patients are instructive here.
These patients do not hear persons, they hear voices. Although the
hallucinations are in harmony with the totality of the patient’s psychological
life, the hallucinated voice is in isolation: in isolation from the other
senses and from the full experience of the sensation of hearing. There is no
interplay or variation with other sounds and phenomena.” (p. 17). They quote A.
Kraus, stating, “a missing worldly background of the ‘perceived,’ and therefore
a missing continuity in space and time, as well as monomodality of perception,
all lead to the fact that the hallucinatory perceived world… is not perceived
from varied perspectives. As Husserl… has shown, it is precisely the endless
shadings of a perceived perspective, possible in normal perception, that
provide the surest conviction of its reality.” (p.17-18). They follow up with a
statement by Merleau-Ponty saying “If the hallucination does not occur in the
stable and intersubjective world, it is because it lacks the fullness, the internal
articulation that makes a true thing repose ‘in-itself,’ act and exist by
itself. The hallucinatory thing is not, like a true thing, a being with depth,
which contracts within itself a density of duration; and a hallucination is
not, like perception, my concrete purchase on time in a living present. It glides
over time, just as it glides over the world.” (p.18).
Rojcewicz Jr. and Rojcewicz also contrast auditory hallucinations to other
symptoms, these include what are often classified as positive symptoms such as visual
hallucinations or hallucinations of smell and touch, as well as delusions, paranoia,
ideas of reference and bizarre behaviours, and negative symptoms such as
emotional withdrawal and inappropriateness of affect. As observed in both the
DSM and ISD classification systems auditory hallucinations without other
pathological manifestations are considered more benign. They argue that “the
significance of hallucinations in pathological conditions is that they are
symptomatic of a pathological way of relating to the world, an abnormal way of
being” (p.16). They point out that Bleuler saw hallucinations as an accessory
symptom of schizophrenia and not a fundamental aspect of the condition. Freud
in his study of Schreber saw hallucinations as a secondary symptom, “an attempt
at some sort of restitution following the primary symptom of severe emotional
withdrawal. The patient initially withdraws his emotional attachment from
person and things in the world; this is the primary pathology, the most
fundamental symptom. Subsequently in many cases, the patient develops hallucinations
or delusions. These symptoms attempt to bring back, to reconstitute in an
idiosyncratic way, the emotional attachment to persons and things in the world.”
(p.16). Rojcewicz Jr., and Rojcewicz argue that these manifestations of
emotional withdrawal can become self-justifying; the phrase ‘J. Edgar Hoover,
proving the FBI are after the voice hearer, “derogatory hallucinations, which
may occur following some blow to self-esteem, help to reinforce a distorted
view of low self-worth… command hallucinations precede acts of violent
acting-out.” (p.16). However, they also point out that the negative symptoms
are of equal importance, “a hallucinating patient may have little social interaction,
speak to few other persons, and spend his time in profound emotional withdrawal.
At times the only interaction seems to be talking back to the hallucinations.”
(p.17).
To understand this phenomenology of voices, Rojcewicz Jr., and Rojcewicz create
a typology of the phenomena associated with voice hearing. After acknowledging
benign types of auditory hallucination such as hearing a loved one who recently
died, or a solo round the world sailor hearing voices after long time at sea,
which we won’t explore further here, they point out that whilst other forms of voice
hearing are possible such as whistles, machinery noises, animal noises, even
musical sounds, the sound of a voice is the most common. People may attribute
the source to all kinds such as God or angels, spirits of the dead, telepathy,
AI or aliens, the voice still takes the form of human speech. However, in
addition to the type of sound, hallucinations have significant characteristics
that follow certain parameters: “extent (frequency, duration), location, degree
of reality, sensory intensity, constancy, overt behaviour, control time, cause,
experience shared, affect, and content” (p. 12). Rojcewicz Jr. and Rojcewicz
investigated each in turn.
1. Type of Speech. As observed earlier it is rare to get a ‘whole sermon of
speech’, rather “usually each episode of a hallucinated voice is usually
relatively short-lived, but there may be many episodes in the course of one
day. Nevertheless, there is often a very complex structure to some auditory hallucinations.
The patient may here several distinct voices, the voices may engage in dialogue
or debate with the patient or with each other, the voices may offer a running
commentary on the patient’s activities, and so forth. At times the auditory
hallucinations are associated with visual or other hallucinations, with
paranoid ideas of reference or with delusions.” (p.13.)
2. Constancy. “In this context ‘constancy’ refers to a global measure of
overall variability, not to minor changes on a given hallucination. While some
patients have rapidly changing hallucinations in reference to content or to
intensity, other patients may have the same hallucination at the same level of
intensity over and over.” (p.13).
3. Duration. Rojcewicz Jr. and Rojcewicz quote Minkowski who points out that “hallucinations
tend to be more or less ephemeral; to come into existence and then vanish
suddenly; to succeed one another rapidly, without crystallizing into something
stable or unchangeable. In general, each episode of a hallucination is
relatively short-lived.” (p.13). As noted before Bleuler observed that “the usual
occurrence is in short sentences or abrupt words, nor paragraphs or long
speeches. These occur intermittently, even if in rapid sequence; it is rare
that the voices are constant or continuous.” (p.13).
4. Content. According to Rojcewicz Jr. and Rojcewicz, “the usual emotional
content, especially in the early stages of schizophrenia, is critical,
threatening, or otherwise negative. As the illness progresses, the
hallucinations can become less negative… Often the content ids of the patient’s
own thoughts, acknowledged by the patient as such, but now audible.” (p.13-14).
They continue “the precise, word-by-word verbal content has been studied in a
few patients… over a period of time, the words were found to be non-random. Semantically
related themes tend to recur, such as the same adjective or verb in different
contexts every day, or the recurrence of words all related to food.” (p.14).
5. Identification. Rojcewicz Jr. and Rojcewicz state
that “in a pseudo-hallucination [a voice considered to be more internal rather
than external], the patient has some insight into the fact that the
hallucination is not real or is created by the self (“my mind is playing tricks
with me”), while in a true hallucination the experience is attributed to a real
outside the self. Many individuals with schizophrenia retain a high level of
conviction in the reality for this external source of their voices… At times,
the hallucination is specifically identified with certainty (as the voice of
God, of an FBI agent, etc.), at times it is identified in a vague way (as the
voice of some unknown enemy), at a times it is not identified at all. Patients
may identify the voices as coming from parts of their body, from their clothing,
from material surroundings, or from persons, agents, or technical equipment
that cannot be seen.” (p.14).
6. Intelligibility. Rojcewicz Jr. and Rojcewicz point out that “the voices can
be mumbling, can be clear and distinct, or can be a changing combination of
these features… the voices can be so loudness of the voices can vary, more or
less independently of the other features listed… The voices can be so loud that
other sounds are drowned out, or they can barely be perceived at all. Several
voices may talk at once, so the intelligibility is diminished, or the words
themselves may be fragments or neologisms without an overall sentence structure.”
(p.14).
7. Spatial localisation. “The voices may occupy an indeterminate position
without special localisation, or they may be more precisely situated. Patients
may localise the source to a considerable distance away, to a relatively far
but still within ordinary sensory range, to a distance relatively close to their
body (sometimes at the same constant distance), or to a space inside the body.
The voices may move between one location and another; in individual patients
the change in location may have some considerable significance” (p.15) It has
been noted that closer voices are sometimes more comforting and supportive.
Other patients are able to describe different spatial localisations that may,
say, be divided as ‘left’ good and ‘right’ bad.
8. Control. “Patients have greater or lesser degrees of control over the occurrence
and effects of their hallucinations… The most extreme issue of control consists
in the obeying of command hallucinations… An individual patient may be able to
resist commands at one time, yet, act out on them at another time. Some
patients continue to have command hallucinations without ever obeying them.”
(p.15).
With regards my own voices I have had at least a few similar experiences from each
parameter in the list. But with regards the examples from the last two posts
then it might be a good idea to explore some. The first example was clearly in
line with the argument around duration, the second was slightly different in
that a narrative arc was formed. It is here that Rojcewicz Jr. and Rojcewicz’s
distinction between dreams and auditory hallucinations may seem to differ.
There are different arguments for this, one is that the voices occur in tandem
with other symptoms. But is it right to call it purely delusional or paranoid?
One way to look at this is the point made about content, in that semantically
they are non-random and there is a recurrence of themes, and words, or signifiers.
I use the term signifier here rather than word, as the term indicates that the ‘words’
can change their relation to signified or even referent, I would argue in much
the same way that Freud interprets dreams. This though still leaves the
question of the difference between manifest and latent content and whether,
there are what are called ‘wish fulfilments’ (although this can, although not
always necessarily, be related to past traumas, something that is acknowledged
by Freud but has been further explored by people such as Romme and Escher) that
cause a latent content of the duration of the ‘illness’. The relation to
emotional withdrawal is related to an idea in phenomenology that Rojcewicz Jr.
and Rojcewicz call the intentional arc, and I will be coming back to this, and
then looking at an issue neglected by Rojcewicz Jr. and Rojcewicz which is what
leads to the slackening of the intentional arc, where I will be returning to
Bateson’s cybernetics. Before that in the next post I will look at a similar typology
of features identified by Lisa Blackman and will be briefly acknowledging her
work on what I have written about in this post, which she calls the ‘problem of
hallucination’ and its place in the history of psychiatry. Before returning to
the problem of the ‘slackening of the intentional arc’. And then I will return to
Freud’s dream interpretations and then back to Deleuze and Gauttari on machines.

The last post looked at the experience of voices over one
day, this second one looks at a more, what Lacan would call S1, S1, S1, apophenic
narrative to give more of a relation of voices to dreams. The experience isn’t
over a day but over a twenty-minute period where the experience was intense
enough that I needed to lie down.
I had been thinking I could hear gossiping about my personal business outside,
this made me very upset. But on top of this it was as if my thoughts were being
interrupted, badly, the interruptions seemed to focusing on criticisms with
regards what I was eating. With regards both the gossip and the food criticism
(seemingly based on the right to decide what I ate as ‘they paid their taxes’)
the local community seemed to be involved, I could hear some criticising, some bullying
but also some supporting voices and voices defending me.
It became clear that a large part of the community was upset by the worst
elements of the abusers attitude and comments. I ended up shouting out of the
window in a pique of rage, in what I imagined to be in earshot of the people gossiping
but also with in hearing range of where I perceived the voices that seemed to stem
from supportive neighbours, I shouted what I thought were the true details of
the situation being gossiped about and slandered with the gossip rather than my
‘facts-about-myself’ being discussed as if the slander were true. I then
noticed someone leave the local pub (a ‘real’ visual sighting), and heard a
voice saying he had left in shame at the level of slander.
At this point the voices seemed to be silenced and much of the cognitive
dissent had calmed down. However, then the smaller number of bullies voices
increased and became more personal, and the voice experience more internal. I
then heard their names shouted out. Dave, Carol and Sara. I had previously been
to the police to talk about the perceived harassment, and I shouted the names of
the bullies out of the window. “We know them” came the shouts of other voices.
Chaos amongst the voices seemed to start up with sounds of the community
telling the bullies off.
Later in the evening, as I was lying down I hear voices say that Dave has ‘done
a runner’. (The impression my mind created from trying to untangle what the
voices were saying was that he was the ring leader winding Carol and Sara up).
Sara carried on the harassment alone and Carol tried to make amends. Carol then
came under attack from the community defending herself against charges of Nazism.
However, her harassment seemed to stop from that point on.

The voice named Sara continues the harassment and then ropes in voices with names Paul, Tim, Heather and Rachel. One by one these voices get pulled out of the fight by ‘the community’ (other unnamed voices). The voice named Dave then comes back for Sara and they ‘go for one last night on the town’ (they ‘paint the town red’) and then the voices all disappear (at least from this narrative arc). At the time I wrote down associations I had with the names of the voices, Sara was a name that, according to a book I had recently read on Twentieth Century classical music by a writer called Alex Ross, was given to Jewish girls in the holocaust by the Nazis. It was also a name of more than one previous girlfriend, both of whose relationships were short (although in different towns) where the split in one had been bad (with later gossip about me), and the other friendly, we had continued to go out ‘on the town together’ regularly. It was also the name of a cousin who had been involved in musicals when younger, and had a partner still involved I the music scene, whose great grandfather’s (my great, great, grandfather and my father’s great grandfather) Jewish East End roots I had written about a few years before and then got paranoid about (partly because my mother who told me the story may have confabulated some of it, as I found out later). My cousin’s name when using her maiden name is the same as a feminist Foucault scholar who I had read before moving to this new town, before my daughter was born, with regards running themes of voices and unresolved cognitive conflicts, it was whilst my daughter was in the High Care Dependency Unit at Great Ormond Street when she was first born, but after I had started my PhD that (was not specialising in, but) included a lot of work based on Foucault scholarship, that I found myself sitting by my daughter’s bedside with the name “FOUCAULT, FOUCAULT, FOUCAULT” screaming through my head and chasing me through the halls of the hospital. This led me to break down and have to return back home leaving my partner there, and then set up a series of events and a poor future relationship with hospitals and my daughter’s care needs after that.

Dave was the name of a ‘voice personality’ used by
another mental health survivor who had bullied me on line. But was also the
name of two old friends from same town as the Sara I had gone ‘on the town with’
who both ended up with schizophrenia. It is also the name of a character in a
book by Will Self I had recently read, who was a taxi driver, I job I had also
had previously. It was also a job I had in the town where I had the friendly
relationship with the ex-girlfriend Sara, shortly before my breakdown and later
hospitalisation.

The relationship with the name in the Alex Ross book
seemed to be related to the fact that my partner’s dad converts Jews as his
Christian mission and as part of that mission teaches about the holocaust in
schools.

I would also point out that it during this voice episode my
wife told me she has ‘come on’ her period. It is after this that Dave comes
back to take Sara on one last night on the town (and paint the town red) before
they both leave. There is clearly a relation to relationship stress here, to
libidinous desires and frustration, with Sara playing different roles, but
possibly related to my partner and her state of mind at the time. Given this as
a period where we were both exhausted and often cranky due to the amount of
time my daughter was in and out of hospital as well as the care at home.
My voices later ‘informed me’ that Carol had worked in a sandwich packing
factory. I had recently come across a social media meme joke about how actual
real-world help was better than thoughts and prayers which didn’t really do
anything, with the punchline by the male, American, black comedian being ‘make
me a fucking sandwich or something’. I had also in the past worked in a meat
packing factory in Kentish Town in London (although I knew no Carols there, it
was at Christmas and I spent most of the temporary job packing frozen turkeys).
I wonder if this is also associated with the eating voices, as eating is often
associated with ‘control’, food disorders are sometimes considered to be related
to the fact that putting food in one’s mouth is the last stop of control over
one’s own body. At the time my son was struggling with his food as a picky
eater due to the stress of our circumstances and of course my daughter was
peg-fed as she couldn’t swallow food without aspirating. So the eating and the
gossip and bullying all seem to indicate relations to control issues and
stress. As well as some relation to the sandwich joke, and relation to
Christmas and packing factories. My father’s mother had an anxiety swallow
issue that stemmed from her father dying when she was a young adult at
Christmas. At the time whilst there is an association with my partner’s father
mentioned here I had no contact and no support at all from my own father. Is
there a ‘substitute’ issue here too?
With regards the family relationship Heather is the name of my sister-in-law
although that name only takes a small role, and oddly seems to be the only name
with a direct reference, the other names being code for other people. But
basically, this period seems to be about relationship struggles, interference, frustration
with work, I get voices that bring taxi driving up often (along with the ‘get a
job’ voice from the last post), a job I have down in three different cities and
is often my fall-back job when able to work but don’t have work experience. There
also seems to be an aspect that whilst before my daughter was born and I had my
second breakdown I had been working on changing my ‘job skills’ but they had
been frustrated. The ‘on the town’ references seem to be both a desire to enjoy
myself, get out of the house, and a reference to the reasons for my partner’s ‘mood’
although it is interesting to know that upon being given the information my
voices ‘leave’, the gossip Sara turning to the friendly Sara. As mentioned in
last post the ‘gossip’ seems to be related to a wish for recognition, perhaps tempered
with disappointment with the lack of support my partner and I were receiving,
other voices at the time spent a lot of time calling me ‘ungrateful’.
I would like to
point out that this is a light ‘voice work’ as I am not prepared to go to deep
into my unconscious (neither was Freud), especially not the more libidinous aspects,
which will be involved, on public record, that work is best done with a
therapist. But hopefully I have given enough information and done enough voice
work here to open up the possibility of such forms of voice interpretation.

As we go through the disparate voice statements I heard in
one day, the next one, which takes the form of
‘Get a job’, seems self-explanatory, if it were not for the fact that Freud
warns us that the secondary agency makes manifestation of content often far
from simple. But let’s start with the obvious I have felt persecuted for my
benefit status since the Tories got in, I was even aware that the Household
survey showed that whilst attitudes to disability benefits had held stable for
twenty or so years, tolerance towards them took a distinct drop after 2010,
which is quite likely to be a direct consequence of the increase in ‘benefit-bashing’
programs on TV and intentional policy, something activist groups like disabled
People Against the Cuts as well as opposition MPs and the UN itself, have all
acknowledged has created a hostile environment towards those on disability benefits.
So perhaps the phrase ‘get a job’ highlights my feelings of some projected
hostility towards my position out there. But perhaps there is something more to
the latent content, it is clear I feel frustrated, my mental health had
improved some time ago and 4 years earlier I had been working full time as a
taxi driver (I had earlier than that got voices about ‘the knowledge’, although
this (I don’t want to go too much into this here) seemed to be related to
knowledge about ‘voice hearing’ perhaps that I had previously facilitated a ‘hearing
voices’ group, that my PhD was exploring psychosis, so I had some knowledge. I
also got voices about McDonalds which sometimes came across saying I should
stop worrying about running a business or trying to do my PhD (I had not
withdrawn at this point), or stand up for my rights as a carer, but knuckle
under, give in to right wing demand and get a job at McDonald’s. But again it
is more complex as my wife’s maiden name is McDonald and by this time my
daughter’s care had moved to Oxford John Radcliffe, and the parent’s accommodation
for the children treated there was funded by the charitable wing of McDonald’s
fast food chain and was the name of that accommodation wing), and so on top of
getting behind on with the academic demands of my PhD, I was considerably more
ill than I had been ever before. So, I was getting annoyed, angry and ashamed
with myself that I had taken several steps back from my previous position,
which itself had taken a lot of work and effort to get to. But also, there was
an element that I just want to get out the house and do something else (I would
later get agoraphobia due to the conflicting emotional demands, almost as a
form of my body and psyche telling me to just rest). I was sick of the
struggling with bills and worrying whether I could pay this month’s rent, and wanted
to be earning more than I was getting as an income. But it was quite clear to
those around me I was too ill to do so. So again perhaps this phrase reflects confidence
issues with regards self-respect for what I do actually do, the hours mentioned
with regards the previous voice statement, the very real demands of my daughter’s
care, the support I give my partner who also struggles with me, and the
severity of how bad I my mental health was and I needed to give myself a break.
But if this is part of the latent content, it must be acknowledged that the
reason it manifested itself the way it did probably was how bad the hostile political
environment was. So there was a wish fulfilment not to be in this frustrated
position, an awareness of the political environment, combined with a lack of
(and therefore desire for – a want of) recognition for my circumstances and
struggle due to social isolation.

So the ‘get a job’ voice and the next voice perhaps
need to be dealt with together, and this is where the comments are less overt
in their manifestation – ‘Join the Army’. There is perhaps a representative linkage
to the voice ‘get a job’, it seems to indicate self-discipline too. It is also
what those with few job prospects are supposed to do within certain traditional
cultural beliefs. When I was younger, I was in the Air Force cadets, mainly
because my grandfather was in the Air Force before, during and after the war.
There is also a more personal return to the voice dialogue aspect of the inner
critic, an aspect of my 16-year-old self coming to terms with 4 years of school
bullying, and this my traumatised self (this voice had a younger appearance) that
has since led to my voice hearing. Now this 16-year-old wanted to become a jet
fighter. (Join the army). But I was rejected as I was colour blind. On top of
this there was the time of hearing this voice I had been amused with regards an
event with my son. I often took him out to give my partner a break, so that she
could sleep, and one place I often took him to was a hill fort at the top of a
steep hill, where we would play being roman’s attacking the ancient Britons, or
vice versa. On this occasion I was following my son up the hill but it was feeling
very grumpy, my son was walking ahead happy in his toddler world unaware of my
feelings behind me, although he had been obstinate earlier, so I had feelings
left over from that, some general tiredness, plus the effort of climbing up the
hill, yet looking at my son in front I had a sudden strong feeling of love for
him, this hapless child ahead of him happy in his own world. My grandpa who had
been in the RAF was also a curmudgeonly grump, although he was kind and gentle
man, and he had often taken me out to museums, zoos, but especially air shows. He
had died around the time I first had my breakdown in the ‘90s. but I found
myself wondering whether he had ever felt this way. That moment passed, and my
son and I reached the hill fort. We did the usual and ‘attacked it’ running up
over the mounds yelling. Then went and looked over the view to the world below,
before we made our way back. As we did so, the air show troupe the Red Arrows flew
over, again reminding me and giving me strong feelings of my grandpa, almost ‘as
if’ a tribute to his memory provided for me by ‘the Real’. So there were
feelings for my grandpa at the time, but also my son, and my son was very
interested in the army at the time, he would like to get me to read about
soldiers and the military to him, and for a Christmas present I went online and
bought him a second hand army surplus (ladies, small) military helmet for him
to play dressing up games. So, there was an element of ‘join the army’ play. As
mentioned before though I had feelings of isolation in my new role as a carer,
and with my left-wing leanings there was an element of the ‘Red Army’
indicating the desire to be more politically active and get solidarity through
that means. So, again, the latent content indicated isolation and lack of
solidarity or recognition.

So the latent content of the wish fulfilment seems
concerned with frustration, isolation lack of recognition for the stress and my
circumstances, a desire not to be living like this now. It suggested ongoing
exhaustion and the need for self-care and to take a break. So it is interesting
to note that my notes taken describing this day indicate that the day before I
had decided to take a break, to rest, and during the day, an activity I was
loathe to do, preferring to get housework
done or catch up on my PhD, it seems I had sat down and watched the film
Catch-22.

As we have already observed the view that hearing voices is not necessarily a pathological
symptom has already been discussed, as it happens diagnostic tools such as DSM
and ICD historically require at least two symptoms only one of which might be
hearing voices, so hearing voices alone is theoretically insufficient reason to
have a mental health diagnosis. The Hearing Voices Network on its ‘About’ page
on its website writes “Hearing voices has been regarded by psychiatry as
‘auditory hallucinations’, and in many cases a symptom of schizophrenia.
However not everyone who hears voices has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. There
are conflicting theories from psychiatrists, psychologists and voice hearers
about why people do hear voices . We
believe that they are similar to dreams, symbols of our unconscious minds.”
If we turn to Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams he famously used his own
dreams as source material, and for that reason I shall endeavour to do the same
with my own voices (whilst as with Freud leaving some details of a personal
nature out). Freud writes:

“Thought is after all nothing but a substitute for a
hallucinatory wish; and as it is self-evident that dreams must be wish-fulfilments,
since nothing but a wish can set our mental apparatus at work. Dreams, which
fulfil their wishes along the short path of regression, have merely preserved for
us in that respect a sample of the psychical apparatus’ primary method of
working, a method which was abandoned as inefficient. What once dominated
waking life, while the mind was still young and incompetent, seems now to have
been banished into the night – just as the primitive weapons, the bows and
arrows, that have been abandoned by adult men, turn up once more in the
nursery. Dreaming is a piece of infantile
life that has been superseded. These methods of working on the part of the
psychical apparatus, which are normally suppressed in waking hours, become
current once more in psychosis and then reveal their incapacity for satisfying
our needs in relation to the outside world.
The unconscious wishful impulses clearly try to make themselves effective in
daytime as well, and the fact of transference, as well as the psychoses, show
us that they endeavour to force their way by way of the preconscious system
into consciousness and to obtain control of the power of movement. Thus the
censorship between the Ucs. And the Pcs., the assumption of whose existence
is positively forced on us by dreams, deserves to be recognized as the watchman
of our mental health. Must we not regard it, however, as an act of carelessness
on the part of the watchman that it relaxes its activities during the night,
allows the suppressed impulses in the Ucs.
to find expression, and makes it possible for hallucinatory regression to
occur once more? I think not. For even though this critical watchman goes to
rest – and we have proof that its slumbers are not deep – it also shuts the
door upon the power of movement. No matter what impulses from the normally
inhibited Ucs. may prance upon the
stage, we need feel no concern; they remain harmless, since they are unable to
set in motion the motor apparatus by which alone they might modify the external
world. The state of sleep guarantees the security of the citadel that must be
guarded. The position is less harmless when what brings about the displacement
of forces is not the nightly relaxation in the critical censorship’s output of
force, but a pathological intensification of the unconscious excitations while
the preconscious is still cathected and the gateway to the power of movement
stands open. When this is so, the watchman is overpowered, the unconscious
excitations overwhelm the Pcs. and
thence obtain control over our speech and actions; or they forcibly bring about
hallucinatory regression and direct the course of the apparatus (which was not
designed for their use) by virtue of the attraction exercised by perceptions on
the distribution of our psychical energy. To this state of things we give the
name of psychosis” (p.567-568)

If we want to give a more contemporary association with modern voice work we might think of the work of those who have found success in Voice Dialogue, as has already been mentioned,, developed for voice hearers from the work of Hal and Sidra Stone, the Talking With Voices therapy developed by psychologists such as Dirk Corsten, Eleanor Longden and Rufus May. In this form of dialogue alienated selves, often including one called the Inner Critic, are invoked, this facet of our multiple selves is supposed to come into our lives early to stop us in advance from feeling such issues as embarrassment (or fear of sanction) or danger, a role as discussed earlier that Freud’s Superego might play. The Stones’ work suggests that this tendency becomes, in many ways, stronger from observing others, however at this moment in the analysis it is sufficient to suggest it is an early ‘watchman’ and hallucinations stem from the attempt of the unconscious to be heard by the conscious, a momentary overpowering of the preconscious (or not so momentary in some cases). In this sense this relates to the relation between latent and manifest content discussed earlier. According to Freud, in dreams the voices try to fulfil a wish, but the ‘watchman’ (the secondary agency) suppresses it, and so the unconscious has to learn to express itself in code, in symbols, in metaphor. If this is the case it should be possible to unpack a psychotic experience using the methods used in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. Much work has been done here previously by psychoanalysts, but so much by people who have struggled with psychosis, although it should be noted that Eleanor Longden is a voice hearer herself. There are implications here, Freud stated that he did not believe that the psychotic had enough insight, although Klein and Lacan continued the work on psychosis with varied levels of success. In Freud’s book The Interpretation of Dreams he used his own dreams on the basis that he wasn’t neurotic. I am using my own experience of voice hearing and thought insertion on the basis that I am psychotic. However, we will both use the current discourse of our time to try to examine these phenomena. In my case the philosophy, psychology and neuroscience has changed and become more complex adding to (and occasionally disproving) the discourse available to Freud at the time. Back to Freud’s theory though, Freud wrote “In the course of my psycho-analyses of neurotics I already have analysed a thousand dream; but I do not propose to make use of this material in my present introduction to the technique and theory of dream-interpretation. Apart from the fact that such a course would be open to the objection that these are the dreams of neuropaths, from which no valid inferences could be made as to the dreams of normal people, there is quite another reason that forces this decision upon me. The subject to which these dreams of my patients lead up is always, of course, the case history which underlies their neurosis. Each dream would therefore necessitate a lengthy introduction and an investigation of the nature and aetiological determinants of the psychoneuroses. But these questions are in themselves novelties and highly bewildering and would distract attention from the problem of dreams. On the contrary it is my intention to make use of my present elucidation of dreams as a preliminary step towards solving the more difficult problems of the psychology of the neuroses. If, however, I forgo my principal material, the dreams of my neurotic patients, I must not be too particular about what is left to me. All that remains are such dreams as have been reported to me from time to time by normal persons of my acquaintance, and others as have been quoted as instances in the literature dealing with dream-life. Unluckily, however, none of these dreams are accompanied by the analysis without which I cannot discover a dream’s meaning. My procedure is not so convenient as the popular decoding method which translates any given piece of a dream’s content by a fixed key. I, on the contrary, am prepared to find that the same piece of content may conceal a different meaning when it occurs in various people or in various contexts. Thus it comes about that I am led to my own dreams, which offers a copious and convenient material, derived from an approximately normal person and relating to multifarious occasions of daily life. No doubt I shall be met by doubts of the trustworthiness of ‘self- analyses’ of this kind; and I shall be told that they leave the door open to arbitrary conclusions. In my judgment the situation is in fact more favourable in the case of self-observation than that of other people; at all events we make the experiment and see how far self-analysis takes us with the interpretation of dreams. But I have other difficulties to overcome, which lie within myself. There is some natural hesitation about revealing so many intimate facts about one’s mental life; nor can there be any guarantee against misinterpretations by strangers. But it must be possible to overcome such hesitations. “Tout psychologiste,” writes Delboeuf [1885], “est obligé de faire l’aveu même de ses faiblesses s’il croit par là jeter du jour sur quelque problème obscur.” And it is safe to assume that my readers too will very soon find their initial interest in the indiscretions which I am bound to make replaced by an absorbing immersion in the psychological problems upon which they throw light.’ (p.104-105) As we have observed with regards the unconscious and the relevance of Freud especially the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud argued that dreams are usually concerned with the previous day but that the censoring part of us means that the part that needs to speak, inform us of our needs, has to do so in code. For our first attempt let’s take some ‘voices’ I hear in one particular day, according to my diary they include statements such as: “Colour blind” “Join the army” “Get a job” and Criticisms of my right to be claiming benefits by a gossip. Let’s work backwards, I had been timesheeting my week to see what I activity I was doing at the time. Given the voices were partially about benefits the n with regards anxiety dreams it seems quite straightforward. In 5 days I pulled 63 hours of child care (including for one of my children who has High Care DLA), house work (affective labour!), PhD work and publishing business, so evidently my right to claim carer’s and have it topped up (as the income generating work is Therapeutic Earnings for only about 5) is legally justified. However, I would like to do more evidently, my business at the time was looking as though it was is close to taking off, but I couldn’t physically put more hours in. This then this was very frustrating. So, then my feelings about myself move from a ‘poor me’ to a ‘bad me’ (in the Richard Bentall sense), and so I seem to have invented as nemesis who is a ‘naïve realist’ but very right wing and prejudiced inner critic. At other times I hear many voices/ alienated inner thoughts and many of them argue with her defending me (as an expression of the solidarity I see out there, however when knackered, miserable and depressed my ego defences fall she ‘walks in’, to do so of course I have had to invent a character/ construct who, symbolically speaking, when confronted with an open door will blame the fact that the door is open for her act of walking through it) but this voice just doesn’t seem to ‘get’ it, even when confronted with her harassment, she defends her right to an opinion, when its pointed out that she is entitled to an opinion but not to harass someone with it, to which she either responds with disrespectful fundamental attribution errors, straw men and ad hominems or she resorts to ‘poor me’ statements, like “silly me”, “oh, it would be my fault” etc . With regards the ‘dream-day’. This period would be around 2014 during the intense period of austerity brought in by the coalition government, around 6 months to a year before the 2015 election that would be one by the Conservative government. So, my social media feed for example would be full of news about the latest example of the punitive austerity regime, as I knew members of both Disabled People Against the Cuts and Recovery in the Bin (this was around the time this second group was formed). If this is manifest content however what could the latent content be. Well, given I was hoping my business was going to take off, perhaps it was a desire not to feel criminalised by the propaganda at the time. As it happens one of the reasons I had moved to the town I was in was the cheap rent, I had done so fed up with being turned down for rentals whenever I moved, I had previously ‘recovered’ and worked full time, so although I had a relapse, I was hoping to be able to use the place as a base to get into paid work where I would be free to move wherever I wanted without having to be worried about the stigma of housing benefit. As it happens writing this later, I am still living in the same place, my mental health having turned worse after my daughter’s birth is improving but I am still unable to work full time. I now get voices that say ‘move’, there are multiple possible reasons for this, but one is the continuing frustration of not being able to ‘avoid’ the stigma if I move. I do not get this voice every day, so the question when I do get it (typing this did not trigger it) is whether there is anything I can trace the day before that would have led to it popping up the next day. Otherwise the behaviour of the female voice though seems to be similar to games played by those from my childhood who wanted me to ‘be in the wrong’ no matter what I argued, using different strategies to get me into trouble rather than them. A sibling power game. Yet this is an aspect of my own frustration, I am not in regular contact with this family member(s). There are two factor involved here, one my frustration is to do with my limited power, for my unconscious to ‘explain’ the perfectly normal and reasonable frustration of the amount of care and affective labour that I (willingly) do but that (admittedly) frustrates my other dreams that are put on hold, so as Freud argues the secondary agency brings up previous patterns of frustration, or frustrating behaviour. With regards the dream day, we must be honest and remember I am married, my partner also puts in many hours, due to my poor mental health does more of the hospital visits and is exhausted. From observation both myself and my partner often ‘revert’ to habitual behaviour (as opposed to refreshed ‘self-aware’ behaviour) and as my partner who is the same gender as my grandma, mother and sister who all used similar games (although to no extent as severe as the voice behaviour) so she in small-scale, microaggression struggles we have in raising our children exhibits this behaviour as a self-defence mechanism when feeling sensitive and powerless. But, again, in no way as extreme as the voice construct’s behaviour. That I guess is exacerbated by my own ongoing frustration combined with my sensitivity to the hostile political environment. On top of this I also get names of certain ex-girlfriend’s (some more than others) mentioned during periods that this voice comes into play. Although this may involve listening to certain music of my youth (for example) the day before (and I have observed this time interval) rather than the behaviour itself. The last aspect is the presentation of gossip, and in a classic Freudian reversal, whilst the manifest content in part related to certain periods in my late adolescence/ early adulthood where I was the victim of malicious gossip, in fact perhaps it exhibited mine and my partner’s isolation. Not just social isolation but in part the lack of social support we were getting (for our mental health and our daughter’s care needs) due to the service cuts. And my clamouring for some practical support when we were struggling. In the next post I will continue examining some of these voices, plus examine another voice experience with a more structured narrative than the occasional statements mentioned here.

To take up the question of dream distortion Freud analyses one of his own dreams, the upshot of the interpretation is that it is a dream that presents some affection but seem to be some disguised insult, that is the “distortion was shown in this case to be deliberate and to be a means of dissimulation.” (p.141). Freud suggests that although some dreams are undisguised fulfilments of wishes, “in cases where the wish-fulfilment is unrecognisable, where it has been disguised, there must have existed some inclination to put up a defence against the wish; and owing to this defence the wish was unable to express itself in a distorted shape.” (p.141). Freud attempts to find a social parallel and finds an analogy in situations where there are two persons, “one of whom possess a certain degree of power which the second is obliged to take into account. In such a case the second person will distort his psychical acts, or as we might put it, will dissimulate”. (p.142). This he also relates to politeness and social convention. Freud mentions the obfuscation political writers use to avoid censorship, “the stricter the censorship, the more far-reaching will be the disguise and more ingenious too may be the means employed for putting the reader on the scent of the true meaning. The fact that the phenomena of censorship and of dreams distortion correspond down to their smallest details justifies us in presuming that they are similarly determined. We may therefore suppose that dreams are given their shape in human beings by the operation of two psychical forces (or we may describe them as currents or systems); and that one of these forces constructs the wish which is expressed by the dream, while the other exercises a censorship upon this dream-wish and, by the use of that censorship, forcibly brings about a distortion in the expression of the wish.” (142-144). Freud concludes that everything from the first agency must pass through the second agency to reach consciousness as such “we see the process of a thing becoming conscious as a specific psychical act, distinct from and independent of the process of formation of a presentation or idea; and we regard consciousness as sense organ which perceives data that arise elsewhere.” (p.144). Freud continues, “bearing in mind our assumption of the existence of two psychical agencies, we can further say that distressing dreams do in fact contain something that is distressing to the second agency, but something which at the same time fulfils a wish on the part of the first agency. They are wishful dreams in so far as every dream arises from the first agency; the relation of the second agency towards dreams is of a defensive not of a creative kind.” (p.144-145). As such we cannot understand dreams through the actions of the second agency alone. Freud reaffirms his statement “A dream is a (disguised) fulfilment of a (supressed or repressed) wish.” (p.160). The application of procedure for Freud’s dreamwork allows him to separate latent from manifest dreams, but the three characteristics of memory in dreams Freud suggests are as follows: “1. Dreams show a clear preference for the impressions of the previous days. 2. They make their selection upon different principles from our waking memory, since they do not recall what is essential and important but what is subsidiary and unnoticed. 3. They have at their disposal the earliest impressions of our childhood and even bring up detiuls from that period of our life which, once again, strike us as trivial and which in our waking state we believe to have long since forgotten.” (p.163-164). These details are expressed in the manifest content. With regards characteristic 1., Freud is quite specific, “the question may be raised whether the point of contact with the dream is invariably the events of the immediately preceding day or whether it may go back to the impressions derived from a rather extensive period of the most recent past…. I am inclined to decide in favour of the exclusiveness of the claims of the day immediately preceding the dream – which I shall speak of as the ‘dream-day’. Whenever it has seemed at first that the source of a dream was an impression two or three days earlier, closer enquiry has convinced me that the impression had been recalled on the previous day and thus it was possible to show that a reproduction of the impression, occurring on the previous day, could be inserted between the day of the original event and the time of the dream; moreover it has been possible to indicate the contingency on the previous day which may have led to the recalling of the older impressions.” (p.166). Freud clarifies “the instigating agent of every dream is to be found among the experiences which one has not yet ‘slept on’. Thus, the relations of a dream’s content to impressions of the recent past (with the single exception of the day immediately preceding the night of the dream) differ in no respect from its relations to impressions dating from any remoter period. Dreams can select their material from any part of the dreamer’s life, provided only that there is a train of thought linking the experience of the dream-day (the ‘recent’ impressions) with the earlier ones.” (p.169). The question with regards voice hearing would be how much the previous 24-hour period affects the next day’s voices manifest content, and the distortion any secondary agency may have on the elucidating the latent content of voice hearing from the manifest content. This takes awareness of the possibility that Freud may be right on this, and from thence reflection on the process. I have done this, and I will use the next article to demonstrate from my own psychotic experience with examples of my own voice hearing. If there is any relation it might then be necessary to question what this secondary agency may be in waking life. As well as updating any issues with Freud with regards advances in modern psychology and therapy. I will also be in future articles pursuing the relation of this secondary agency with regards the Word Salads as described by RD Laing, and signifyin(g) as described by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Before relating it to biopolitics, but first I want to continue looking at Freud and dreams, and its relation to Deleuze and Guattari on the machinic unconscious.

In examining this Royal Road, Freud first clarifies his idea that every dream is a wish fulfilment, he states that people would question this assertion: “’There is nothing new,’ I shall be told, ‘in the idea that some dreams are to be regarded as wish-fulfilments; the authorities noticed that fact long ago… But to assert that there are no dreams other than wish fulfilment dreams in only one more unjustifiable generalisation, though fortunately one easy to disprove…’” (p.134). And Freud suggests that a counter-argument would be distressing anxiety dreams. He responds “It does in fact look as though anxiety dreams make it impossible to assert as a general proposition… that dreams are wish-fulfilments; indeed they stamp any proposition as an absurdity… Nevertheless, there is no great difficulty in meeting these apparently conclusive objections. It is only necessary to take notice of the fact that my theory is not based on a consideration of the manifest content of dreams but refers to the thoughts which are shown by the work of interpretation to lie behind dreams. We must make a contrast between the manifest and the latent content of dreams. There is no question that there are dreams whose manifest content is the most distressing kind. But has anyone tried to interpret such dreams? To reveal the latent thoughts behind them? If not, then the two objections raised against my theory will not hold water: it still remains possible that distressing dreams and anxiety dreams, when they have been interpreted may turn out to be fulfilment of wishes.” (p.135).
Is it this that Deleuze and Guattari question when they state “These indifferent signs follow no plan, they function at all levels and enter into any and every sort of connection; each one speaks its own language, and establishes syntheses with others that are quite direct along transverse vectors, whereas the vectors between the basic elements that constitute them are quite indirect” and yet they seem to acknowledge manifest content when they say “No chain is homogeneous; all of them resemble, rather a succession of characters from different alphabets in which an ideogram, a pictogram, a tiny image of an elephant passing by, or a rising sun may suddenly make its appearance. In a chain that mixes together phonemes, morphemes, etc., without combining them, papa’s moustache, mama’s upraised arm, a ribbon, a little girl, a cop, a shoe suddenly turn up. Each chain fragments of other chains from which it ‘extracts’ a surplus value, just as the orchid code ‘attracts’ the figure of the wasp: both phenomena demonstrate the surplus value of a code. It is an entire system of shuntings along certain tracks, and of selections by lot, that bring about partially dependent, aleatory phenomena bearing a close resemblance to a Markov chain. The recordings and transmissions that have come from the internal codes, from the outside world, from one region to another of the organism, all intersect, following the endlessly ramified paths of the great disjunctive synthesis” The relation to latent content is understood thus: “If this constitutes a system of writing, it is a writing inscribed on the very surface of the Real: a strangely polyvocal kind of writing, never a biunivocalized, linearized one; a transcursive system of writing, never a discursive one; a writing that constitutes the entire domain of the ‘real inorganization’ of the passive syntheses, where we would search in vain for something that might be labelled the Signifier – writing that ceaselessly composes and decomposes the chains into signs that have nothing that impels them to become signifying.” But the clincher where they differ from Freud is this: “The vocation of the sign is to produce desire, engineering it in every direction.” The tendency for desire to engineer in every direction is the relation of Freud’s wish fulfilment to Deleuze and Guattari’s machinism. This is clearly a move towards cybernetics post-Saussure, and Lacan’s working of Freud after Saussure. And for this reason, in a while, it is worth looking at Laing’s understanding of machines as well. However, I would first like to momentarily return to Voice Dialogue and point out that the interpretation of voices by this technique still retains the knowledge that manifest content and latent content are separate. However, to look at this as a biopolitical point of view one must then look at machines in Marx’s Grundrisse, and Foucault’s understanding of the relation of machines to ordo-liberalism as an aspect of biopolitics in order to then return to the use of Voice Dialogue (and CBT for that matter) in contemporary mental health treatment, why one gets widespread policy assent (especially under austerity) and the other still lacks traction. In the meantime, let’s return to Freud’s theory of the dreamwork and its relation to the unconscious.
Upon elucidating the concept of latent and manifest content of dreams to explain wish-fulfilment in anxiety dreams, Freud suggests to effectively interpret the latent content as part of the dreamwork one must ask another question which is “Why is it that dreams with an indifferent content, which turn out to be wish-fulfilments, do not express their meanings undisguised?” that is; what is the origin of dream-distortion?

However whilst Deleuze and Guattari acknowledge Lacan when they talk of the discovery of a fertile domain of a code of the unconscious incorporating the entire chain – or several chains – of meaning, they then state that this domain is indeed strange due to its multiplicity – “a multiplicity so complex that we can scarcely speak of one chain or even one code of desire. The chains are called ‘signifying chains’ (chaines signifiantes) because they are made up of signs, but these signs are not themselves signifying. The code resembles not so much a language as a jargon, an open-ended, polyvocal formation. The nature of the signs within it is insignificant, as these signs have little or nothing to do with what supports them.” (p.38).
what supports these signs is the ‘body without organs’. “These indifferent signs follow no plan, they function at all levels and enter into any and every sort of connection; each one speaks its own language, and establishes syntheses with others that are quite direct along transverse vectors, whereas the vectors between the basic elements that constitute them are quite indirect.” (p.38). There is a materialist understanding of the unconscious here that is worth comparing with Freud’s understanding on the unconscious in the Interpretation of Dreams, however first it is worth noting that although Deleuze and Guattari acknowledge Antonin Artaud as the source of their theory of the Body Without Organs, reference to bodies without organs goes back to Schopenhauer. This is important as Schopenhauer had a major influence on not just Nietzsche but also Freud and Bergson, both of whom influenced Deleuze, although to fully get the ‘phenomenology’ here, we must understand that Spinoza brings the materialism in here. So, to recap, in Deleuze, there is an anti-Hegelianism that goes back to Difference and Repetition (Schopenhauer famously was a contemporary at the same university as Hegel) that is influenced by a combination of Schopenhauer’s vitalism and Spinoza’s materialism. So, to look at this understanding of the unconscious we can trace historical roots that go back thus far (and further to Greek atomism) but to do so we will use Freud for the Schopenhauer influence, and Antonio Damasio for the Spinoza influence. However in doing so we will compare and contrast with the influence of Hegel, at least the influence of machines, to Marx’s theory in the Grundrisse.
Firstly though it was in World as Will and Idea, Book 2, Section 23 that Schopenhauer wrote: “It remains only for us to take the final step, and to extend our thesis to all those forces which in nature act in accordance with universal, immutable laws under which all bodies move, being wholly without organs, are not susceptible to stimuli, and cannot perceive motive.” And it is with this in mind that we delve into Deleuze and Guattari’s picture of the unconscious: “The disjunctions characteristic of these chains still do not involve any exclusion, however, since exclusions can arise only as a function of inhibiters and repressers that eventually determine the support and firmly define a specific, personal subject. No chain is homogeneous; all of them resemble, rather a succession of characters from different alphabets in which an ideogram, a pictogram, a tiny image of an elephant passing by, or a rising sun may suddenly make its appearance. In a chain that mixes together phonemes, morphemes, etc., without combining them, papa’s moustache, mama’s upraised arm, a ribbon, a little girl, a cop, a shoe suddenly turn up. Each chain fragments of other chains from which it ‘extracts’ a surplus value, just as the orchid code ‘attracts’ the figure of the wasp: both phenomena demonstrate the surplus value of a code. It is an entire system of shuntings along certain tracks, and of selections by lot, that bring about partially dependent, aleatory phenomena bearing a close resemblance to a Markov chain. The recordings and transmissions that have come from the internal codes, from the outside world, from one region to another of the organism, all intersect, following the endlessly ramified paths of the great disjunctive synthesis. If this constitutes a system of writing, it is a writing inscribed on the very surface of the Real: a strangely polyvocal kind of writing, never a biunivocalized, linearized one; a transcursive system of writing, never a discursive one; a writing that constitutes the entire domain of the ‘real inorganization’ of the passive syntheses, where we would search in vain for something that might be labelled the Signifier – writing that ceaselessly composes and decomposes the chains into signs that have nothing that impels them to become signifying. The vocation of the sign is to produce desire, engineering it in every direction.” (p.38-39).
If we first go over dreams as the ‘royal road to the unconscious’ for Freud. Freud states quite specifically that “Dreams are not to be likened to the unregulated sounds that rise from a musical instrument struck by a blow of some external force instead of by a player’s hand; they are not meaningless, they are not absurd; they do not imply that one portion of our store of ideas is asleep while another portion is beginning to wake. On the contrary, they are psychical phenomena of complete validity – fulfilment of wishes; they can be inserted into the chain of intelligible waking mental acts; they are constructed by a highly complicated activity of the mind.” (p.122). This seems to be the very obverse of what Deleuze and Guattari are claiming. Freud is claiming that there is indeed a chain of signification, even whilst we are asleep. The difference for Deleuze and Guattari relates both to the body (albeit a body without organs – there is a reason for this) and the introduction of machines into human artifice, especially as a product of the industrial revolution. One that made its way into psychology via cybernetics (such as Bateson).
But to have a point of contrast, let us familiarise ourselves with Freud’s concept of dreams and their relation to the unconscious. For Freud, perhaps the entire structure of his book the Interpretation of Dreams can be premised on the question of “if, as we are told by dream-interpretation, a dream represents a fulfilled wish, what is the origin of the remarkable and puzzling form in which the wish-fulfilment is expressed?” For some, including behaviourists, not too much is to be read into dream interpretation, nor for that matter the unconscious, what matters is observable behaviour and how this can be adapted or persuaded. Deleuze and Guattari do not want to jettison the unconscious, but they do want to make it more ‘machinic’. Freud continues asking “what alteration have the dream-thoughts undergone before being changed into the manifest dream which we remember when we wake up? How does that alteration take place? What is the source of the material that has been modified into the dream? What is the source of the peculiarities that are to be observed in the dream-thoughts – such for instance, as the fact that they may be mutually contradictory? Can the dream tell us anything new about our internal psychical processes? Can its content correct opinions we have had throughout the day?” (p.122-123).

Sentence structure varies in length from the very brief of commands such as “Go!” to the very long. Most sentences on average contain around 20 words. From this it has been estimated that there are a possible 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible sentences in the English language. There are some sequences of words that aren’t sentences. These words are considers unacceptable, one can argue that this is because there are prescriptive and descriptive rules about how sentence structure works. These rules are known as syntax, grammatical rules that determine the sequence of words that constitute a sentence. Some would say that grammatical acceptability is related to meaning. However nonsense writing such as that of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky would disprove this. The acceptability of sentence structure lies more in phrase structure. Behind this phrase structure lie the sentence’s underlying structure (or ‘deep structure’), which provides the starting point for semantic meaning, e.g., who does what to whom. However one can move around the element’s structure, perhaps for stylistic reasons, or to draw attention to one element rather than another, this is the surface structure (or s-structure). This is the structure of the sentence expressed in speech. A sentence’s underlying structure cannot be observed directly, instead it is inferred from various patterns in the surface structure. When an element of a sentence vacates a position to move somewhere else, it doesn’t depart cleanly. Instead it leaves a trace behind. The trace isn’t expressed out loud, but is evident in the speech pattern. These traces thus allow us to document that elements have been moved around and from where they have been moved. This then establishes that different types of sentence, such as questions, are not formed by running through the appropriate phrase structure rules, but by moving elements around in a tree structure in accord with the movement rules.
This relates to sentence formation, but how do we comprehend the sentences we read or hear? How do we parse sentences? We know that subjects use phrase structure to interpret the sentence in the first place. But how do we figure out the phrase structure? It seems listeners and readers use phrase endings to do so. But how do they identify such phrase endings in more complicated sentences? Parsing a sentence turns out to be a complex process due to the variety of sentence forms and also due to ambiguity. Temporary ambiguity can occur within a sentence, where the first part of sentence is ambiguous but the second part clears things up. It seems we use a variety of different strategies to parse sentences. For example as a matter of convenience, we assume sentences for the most part are active, rather than passive (at least in English) and listen out for them, although this can cause issues parsing when passive sentences are encountered. Other factors involved in parsing are function words and the various morphemes that signal syntactic role. There is also minimal attachment, this means that throughout a sentence the listener or reader looks out for the simplest phrase structure that will accommodate all the words heard or read so far. Parsing is also guided by semantic factors, not just syntax. With regards words for which there are multiple referents for the same word, then people tend to assume its most frequent meaning.
So we now have a combination of syntax and parsing, and we bring these to bear in parsing language, but how do these factors combine? The interactionist view is that all one’s knowledge comes to bear on a sentence simultaneously. Then there is the modular account, where one uses different sources of information at different points whilst parsing the sentence. One might first try to analyse the syntax without consideration of semantic elements, only bringing these elements to bear once the syntax has been understood. Although the interactionist model seems a best fit when it is observed that moment-by-moment, word-by-word parsing is influenced by semantics when trying to untangle syntax. But the picture is different when we look at word identification. When an ambiguous word is used, there is a delay, so initially in parsing word identification is quite open, but as the latter parts of a sentence come into play, the reader or listener make their selection and the ambiguity is shut down to one possible interpretation.
Although we have looked at the complexity of interpreting language, this description still understates things, firstly there are pronouns. Pronouns without specific referents can be very ambiguous. The sketch with the Knights Who Say Ni in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail who are ultimately defeated by an overuse of the word ‘it’ is a case in point. Then, especially with regards spoken word there is prosody, the rise and fall of intonation and the pattern of pauses, the rhythm and pitch cues of speech, which plays an important part in speech perception. It can reveal the mood of the speaker, it can, through effect, direct the listener’s attention to a specific focus or theme in the sentence. It can also render unambiguous a sentence that would otherwise be confusing.
And after examining this we have not dealt with how language is produced. How does one turn ideas, intentions and queries into actual sentences? How does language come from thought? This was partially covered by Vygotsky. Likewise after parsing a sentence how does one particular sentence integrate with earlier or subsequent sentences? With regards this we have looked at Wittgenstein, although there is also the issue knowledge of pragmatics, that is how language is ordinarily used. However this proceeds into on the one hand literature, the other politics, communicative ethics and rhetoric. We however want, for the moment to venture backwards to the unconscious and back to our discussion of Deleuze and machines. First though it is useful to refresh are discussion of Vygotsky and inner thought. For the psychotic and voice hearers, at least those distressed, there are clearly issues of ambiguity in the voices heard. Is this as Vygotsky argues the issue of predicates? We have seen that in a sentence of at least two parts it is the first part of a sentence that is ambiguous, but if inner thought is based on predicates, do we only hear one part. Take the statement ‘she passed’. Is that someone dying? Missing a turning in a journey? Passing an exam? Passing a ball in a game of football? But it is ‘heard’ so we have the phoneme issue in spoken word, so there is (like in the game Charades) a ‘sounds like’ element, so is the statement ‘she parsed’ instead? Perhaps we have a further clue when the statement is revealed as a longer one: ‘She passed the sentence’. Perhaps it was a mishearing after all and it is ‘she parsed the sentence’, someone (‘she’ bearing in mind ‘who’ is still ambiguous) has understood a sentence. But maybe not perhaps the referent is a judge and the judge has passed sentence on a criminal? As has already been implied this is before the issue of ‘referents’ with regards pronouns is taken into account. At we have yet to question the possibility of metaphor as argued by Freudian psychoanalytic theory. However, from this issue with sentence parsing in voice hearing, I would like to remind, for the third time, of Vygotsky’s statement that “while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words die as they bring forth thought” and that “a thought may be compared to a cloud shedding a shower of words” and in the next article we will return to Deleuze and Gauttari and the machinic unconscious, that the chains thought in the unconscious are called ‘signifying chains’ (chaines signifiantes) because they are made up of signs, but these signs themselves are not signifying. The code resembles not so much language as jargon, an open-ended, polyvocal formation.”

Deleuze and Guattari suggest that the understanding of the machinic unconscious can be traced back to Lacan. However they argue this unconscious is a multiplicity “but how very strange thisw domain seems, simply because it’s a multiplicity – a multiplicity so complex that we can scarcely speak of one chain or even one code of desire. The chains are called ‘signifying chains’ (chaines signifiantes) because they are made up of signs, but these signs themselves are not signifying. The code resembles not so much language as jargon, an open-ended, polyvocal formation.” (p.38). In this sense we can see we are looking at that part of thought beyond inner speech identified by Vygotsky where thought breaks up “But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words die as they bring forth thought” or “A thought may be compared to a cloud shedding a shower of words.”
I think it is appropriate for the moment to look at language from a cognitive perspective, and then look at some of the cognitive underpinnings of language use, specifically ‘connectionism’. Generally, in cognitive theory, sentences are considered to be comprised of ‘morphemes’, these are the smallest language units that carry meaning, these can be roughly split up into content morphemes and function morphemes. In the sentence “The umpires talked to the players”, the content morphemes would be ‘the’, ‘umpire’, ‘talk’, ‘to’ , ‘the’ and ‘play’, whilst the function morphemes would be ‘s’, ‘ed’, ‘er’ and ‘s’. In spoken language morphemes are conveyed by sounds called ‘phonemes’. Speech production is categorised via places of articulation and manner of production, that are affected by airflow and the movement, shape and physical characteristics of the mouth and vocal chords (think Watson’s theory of inner speech as sub-vocalisation). With voice hearing specifically though, we might think perhaps, especially with regards acousmatic voice hearing especially (i.e. voices heard through the ‘sound’ of distant, muffled speech) that speech perception and language parsing is important. One might think less so with regards ‘inner voice hearing’ although with regards Freud’s phrase ‘he is suffering from memories’ and that we have memories of things said and described we might at least entertain that such perception is still relevant, whilst also trying to hold at the same time Vygotsky’s arguments of inner speech, and Deleuze and Guattari’s polyvocal formations. “Features of speech production also correspond to what listeners hear when they are listening to speech. Thus phonemes that differ only in one production feature sound similar to each other; phonemes that differ in multiple features sound more distinct. This is reflected in the pattern of errors subjects make, when they try to understand speech in a noisy environment. Subjects misperceptions are usually off by just one feature, so that [p] is confused with [b] (a difference only in voicing), [p] with [t] (a difference only in place of articulation), and so on… This makes it seem like the perception of speech may be a straightforward matter: A small number of features is sufficient to characterise any particular speech sound. All the perceiver needs to do, therefore is detect these features and, with this done, the speech sounds are identified… As it turns out, though, speech perception is far more complicated than this.” (p.351). One of the problems is that “within [a] stream of speech there are no markers to indicate where one phoneme ends and the next begins. Likewise, there are often no gaps, or signals of any sort, to indicate the boundaries between successive syllables or successive words. Thus, as a first step prior to phoneme identification, you need to “slice” this stream into the appropriate segments – a step known as speech segmentation.” Reisberg points out that common sense suggests to us that we are usually convinced that there are pauses between words that mark word boundaries for us, but, he argues, this is an illusion and that we often ‘hear’ pauses that aren’t there. An example is when we measure the speech stream captured by a recording device on sequencing software, or when we listen to a foreign language we don’t know so are unable to put the word boundaries in ourselves, so as a consequence we hear a continuous, uninterrupted flow of sound. Another problem is coarticulation which refers to the fact that in speech we do not utter one phoneme at a time, they overlap. So as you are uttering the ‘s’ in soup your mouth is already saying the next vowel and so on to the next phoneme. “These complications – the need for segmentation in a continuous speech stream; the variations caused by coarticulation; and the variations form speaker to speaker or form occasion to occasion – render speech perception surprisingly complex.” (p.353). So how do we manage it? Well, we are generally able to supplement what we hear with expectations (conventions) and knowledge, our Lebensweld, and this guides our interpretation. This can also lead to ‘restoration effects’ where subjects hear ‘speech’ sounds that are not presented. However, generally, inferences are used to fill in gaps, as are redundancies (such as the predictability of certain conventions with regards phonemes in the English language).
However these are not the only means we have for deciphering speech, there is also categorical perception, this is the trendency to hear speech sounds ‘merely’ as members of a category e.g. the category of [z] sounds or the category of [p] sounds. But Reisberg continues “more precisely, we are quite adept ay hearing differences between categories, but we are relatively insensitive to variations within the category” (p.354), so we are better at distinguishing [p] from [b] but not so much amongst differing [p]s, Reisberg argues that “of course ,this insensitivity is precisely what we want, since it allows us to separate the wheat from the chaff: We easily detect what category a sound belongs in, but we are virtually oblivious to the inconsequential (and potentially distracting) background variations.” (p.354). But what about more complicated sounds? English speakers use 40 phonemes, but these can be combined and recombined to create tens of thousands of different morphemes, which can then themselves be combined to form even more words. These combinations though are not random. There are patterns to these combinations, some common, some rarer. The average person knows from around 45,000 to over 100,000 different words. For each of these words the speaker must know the meaning that corresponds to the words’ sound, that is our knowledge of words must be able to tie together the phonological representation with the semantic representation. With regards the idea of concepts that Vygotsky refers to, where at age 12 the average person moves from complex thinking to conceptual thinking, there is a connection between semantic knowledge and conceptual knowledge. Some concepts are harder than others to express in words, other concepts take many words to express. Even so there are many words that express single concepts and generally speaking on can only understand a word’s meaning if one understands the relevant concepts attached to it. Some argue that to understand a word one needs to know its definition, others that one must understand the prototype for the concept named by the word. Generally though words are used to name objects or events in the world around us. What a word refers to is called the referent. Saussure says that with the word H-O-R-S-E, where the concept of horse is what is signified, the referent is what ‘kicks you’. Thus the referent always means the actual thing in the real world, to which a word or a concept points. With regards the reference to Deleuze above the signifier is the pointing finger, the word, the sound-image whilst the signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing indicated by the signifier. The thing signified is created in the perceiver and is internal to them. Whilst we share concepts, we do so via signifiers. the signifier creates the signified in terms of the meaning it triggers for us. The meaning of a sign needs both the signifier and the signified as created by an interpreter. A signifier without a signified is noise. A signified without a signifier is impossible. Take for example The Prime Minister of the UK. The reference to any particular living person changes, but the meaning itself, the position within government and its relation to the governance of a nation state has more stability. With regards the meaning of the signified being created in the perceiver, the meaning of the term Prime Minister of the UK will be different for a Labour supporter than for a Conservative voter; for an anarchist than for staunch supporter of representative democracy. However the concept referred to by the signifier, that a particular person is the head of the government at a particular time remains more stable and allows the Conservative and the Labour supporter to know that they are referring ot the same position, as much as possible.
In addition to referent we may find that two or more phrases refer to the same objects in the world but mean different things. This case of ‘same reference, different meaning’ means there must be more to meaning than reference. This is called the ‘sense’ of a word. For example ‘creature with a heart’ and ‘creature with kidneys’ can refer to the same type of living organism.
The next article we will look at the psychological reality of linguistic rules before returning to the underpinning thoughts, and then we will take another look at what Deleuze and Guattari are trying to say.